This is scary. I am sure these parents must feel awful.
Though I wonder if we could potentially learn something about the mechanisms of disease occurring in T1 by studying some of these children.
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I think there’s a necessary distinction between saying the children while in an acute multi-inflammatory disease state exhibited high blood sugar consistent with diabetes and actually saying they developed diabetes. It will be interesting to see if “high blood sugar levels consistent with diabetes” persists after the many other acute complications have subsided
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yes, I’ve heard that at last some people with SARS-CoV-2 are developing acute high blood sugar during the peak of their illness, but that it is gradually improving. I guess the question is whether T-cells are destroying beta cells, or if some other inflammatory process is simply preventing them from working well at the moment…
Lots to learn in the coming months…
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I’ve been saying for at least a couple of weeks that I’m expecting to see levels of new T1 cases spike within the next year thanks to COVID-19. A number of factors suggest that this could be a plausible if not likely outcome of the virus:
The first SARS virus induced a T1 diabetes-like syndrome in some adults, most of whom recovered insulin production within a couple of years, but some of whom remained diabetic: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00592-009-0109-4
SARS-CoV-2 attacks ACE2 receptors, which are common in islet cells.
Many of us with T1 developed the disease shortly after a particularly bad flu or such, and I’ve heard that long posited as a potential trigger for developing it. We know that T1 almost certainly has a strong environmental component, given the relatively weaker genetic aspect—lots more people have some degree of genetic vulnerability than end up with T1, and many of us with the disorder have few or no relatives with it.
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My daughter has a systematic vasculitis disease similar to Kawasaki, and she has exhibited high BG numbers while in a flare, but otherwise is glucose normal. Scared me to death the first time I saw her at 198 w/ketones because I thought for sure she was developing type 1. It’s been nearly 3 years since that particular result. I still check her occasionally and her BG is perfect every time (flares have become much more mild). It’s not necessarily surprising to me, then, that these children are experiencing high BG.
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More on the possibility of COVID triggering diabetes: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01891-8?fbclid=IwAR0IWSSF3DHNupW1FqWSj5c6OPmutc_TcdWuzQh4hISQJRtg9w-xeSEJxDU
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